Dear Screen-L: The University of California Press is pleased to announce the publication of: The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood Now available in paperback! Kristin Thompson is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her many books include Film Art: An Introduction and Film History: An Introduction (both with David Bordwell) and Storytelling in the New Hollywood. http://go.ucpress.edu/FrodoFranchise "Once in a lifetime." The phrase comes up over and over from the people who worked on Peter Jackson's _The Lord of the Rings. _The film's seventeen Oscars, record-setting earnings, huge fan base, and hundreds of ancillary products attest to its importance and to the fact that _Rings _is far more than a film. Its makers seized a crucial moment in Hollywood-the special effects digital revolution plus the rise of "infotainment" and the Internet-to satisfy the trilogy's fans while fostering a huge new international audience. The resulting franchise of franchises has earned billions of dollars to date with no end in sight. Kristin Thompson interviewed seventy-six people to examine the movie's scripting and design and the new technologies deployed to produce the films, video games, and DVDs. She demonstrates the impact _Rings _had on the companies that made it, on the fantasy genre, on New Zealand, and on independent cinema. In fast-paced, compulsively readable prose, she affirms Jackson's _Rings _ as one the most important films ever made. ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu